


Bonds, at the Edge of the Apocalypse

by Eratoschild



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-25 07:23:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13829301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eratoschild/pseuds/Eratoschild
Summary: From the Ignoct week 2018 prompt:"Ignis or Noctis grab onto one another as Noctis goes into the Crystal, and they spend the next ten years together".Just a two-part musing on this idea, the first chapter being the obvious Ignis and Noctis, but I couldn't help need to account for Prompto and Gladio as well.The work itself was formerly titled Fusion/Fission.





	1. Fusion/Fission

They were two again. Two, and it was utterly foreign. Each felt like half of him had been cut, ripped, _unwoven_ from within the rest of him, so wholly had they been integrated.

Was it any wonder? The crystal pulled them in as one. They were touching when Noctis was pulled in, Ignis had reached out, desperately seeking one last moment of fleeting contact with his Prince, his _King_ , knowing what would ultimately happen, not knowing when. Fully expecting Noct’s hand to be ripped from his, Ignis was shocked to find instead that he was pulled in along with him. There was no time to react. Gladio and Prompto lunged after him in vain, not quite fast enough, not quite close enough.

If either of the two others had tried to reach him, would he have been pulled free? Would they have been pulled in too? Eventually the crystal revealed that the answer was neither. Had Ignis not been touching Noctis, he would not have been pulled in. However, somehow the in the crystal’s estimation, they were two halves of one whole. Their touch at that moment was bond enough for the crystal to gain unbreakable hold on both. No human force could have severed them. Gladio or Prompto would have been ejected had either managed to reach them.

Inside the crystal, there was no Ignis, no Noctis. One did not begin where the other ended because there was neither beginning nor end. Here, there was _one_ but no _other_ , no _before_.

Time stretched. They had known there would someday be an _after_ , a _two, again_ \- whatever that was. But that had long been a distant abstract. Until it wasn’t. Expulsion came without warning. They were in the crystal and then as violently as they'd been pulled in and fused, they were spat out and torn asunder.

Missings. Voids. Emptinesses. Poets speak of a hole in the heart, or a piece of the soul gone. But this was no one piece, no one hole. It was a hundred million abysses as big as atoms, punched into the spaces among the molecules of their beings. Neither felt assured of his own body's structural integrity. They had to learn to be two again. They didn't have time to unlearn being one.


	2. Covalence

A second too late, an inch too far.Four. Becomes two. And two. Halved, with Ignis and Noctis pulled into the crystal. 

Prompto and Gladio left behind. What can they do now but hold to each other. And hope. 

And fight. To survive. No Noctis, no Ignis.

Two on the outside, still fighting. Have to keep it together, hold out for Ignis and Noctis to return. Assuming they will return. They have to. It’s the only way that Noctis can save them from the night. That one would not return without the other is...unfathomable. The very idea is a cursedtaboo with the promise of utter ruin and despair if crossed. If they never speak it, surely both must return. To the world, to them.

Every hour, every minute they can hold together and keep fighting is an hour, a minute closer to their return. Whenever that may be. Every daemon they kill is a step towards that moment. 

In their rare moments of rest, they fall into each other’s arms. There is no peace, but they take solace in one another. No one else knows precisely what they know. No one else could fathom how precarious their bond, their mental state, their existence.

They have to stay alive, for Ignis, for Noctis, for their return. They have to keep it together so they can regroup when the time comes. They fight the despair, mortality and darkness as much as they fight the demons. Maybe more so. 

Sometimes one, or the other, will slip. Each time, the certainty of recovery grows a little dimmer.

If there’s any hope left right now in the world until Ignis and Noctis returns, it’s on them. 

What more can they do but endure?


End file.
